Sleek visuals, polished interfaces, and an appropriate pairing of colours and fonts that appeal to the user sound like good design. But for Olufemi Ayandokun, a senior product designer at XchangeBox, design is more than how beautiful it looks; it should serve a purpose.
After an experience with informal traders that changed his work view, Ayandokun now builds every one of his products for digital inclusivity. He believes digital products should work for everyone, not just the tech-savvy.
In this edition of After Hours, Ayandokun shares his journey into product design, how he works, and why Nigeria needs a design standard.
A designer’s backstory
I didn’t initially set out to become a designer. I actually studied civil engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University. It was my parents’ choice, though, not mine.
While in school, I started designing. I found myself drawn to designs, fascinated by the visuals. So, I just started playing around with graphic design. That curiosity grew into my passion.
After my first degree, I went on to do a master’s in marketing communications, and that was where my perspective shifted. I realised that design wasn’t just about the aesthetics; it had to serve a purpose.
That was my gateway into product design. I started doing a lot of research on product designers and their designs. I officially made the switch in 2021, when I joined Moni, a financial institution specialised in enabling POS businesses.
Since then, I’ve never looked back. Today, I work as a senior product designer at a software company called XchangeBox.
The drive for inclusive design
My first official role as a designer was at PayPorte, and then I joined Moni. While at Moni, I worked on a product targeted at Nigeria’s informal market. The product was meant to digitise ajo, which is like informal savings. To get it right, we had to understand the lived experiences of the people in that space and find an approach that basically covered them.
That was when I realised that inclusivity has been lacking in the Nigerian design space. Most of the time, products are built only for tech-savvy people, leaving out the millions of people in the informal space who would also like to be included in the tech space.
We spent time talking to customers directly, observing how they interacted with devices. Now, there’s a lot of research and user testing, and that’s what people actually miss out on. You have to know your audience to design a product for them.
That’s where inclusivity comes into play. Most of my targets were market women, POS agents, small traders, farmers, and informal merchants. The designs had to cater to the pain points of the grassroots level.
Essentially, trust is the currency for lending, and because we had to formalise how people borrow money, our idea was to build a community of people who could vouch for those borrowing money.
Note that these people also had to agree. If they could not vouch for the borrower, then the money requested would not be given. We started computing this manually with Microsoft Excel, and then we moved to creating the proper solutions for it.
One thing we discovered is that most of these people used shared devices, so we had to consider making sign-in/sign-out easier since two or three people may be using the same phone. It was a bit hard since there was also a security challenge, but we made it work.
We also prioritised simple money transfers and withdrawals. Just with the click of a button, they could withdraw and get their money.
Nigeria’s design gap
One truth I’ve learnt is that not everybody understands the regular process of using an app. So, I try to make all my processes simple and very easy to use. The most important thing in design is not how beautiful it is.
Firstly, when it comes to web-based designs, there should be speech-to-text. Unfortunately, Nigeria doesn’t have a design standard, and that is one of the things I’m trying to advocate for.
These standards are things the government agencies should try to implement. In most developing countries, such as the United Kingdom, they have standards. People can’t ship out any websites without following these standards, so there’s inclusivity and access to all.
A design has to cater to those with colour blindness, neurodiverse conditions, language barriers, and even those with disabilities. Having worked in the UK for about two years now, I realised we neglect certain things because we’re not in that situation.
In Nigeria, we need to start adopting these standards. A lot of times, people don’t advocate for it because they’re the minority. However, designers should be the voice of inclusivity.
For one, we don’t have a dedicated regulatory body that oversees and tries to implement these standards in Nigeria. If we have these guidelines in place, it would be easier for product designers to follow them.
Where I currently work, we’ve implemented this, but we can’t say the same for other companies. There are levels to these guidelines, but the bare minimum should be implemented, especially for public-facing websites.
For example, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are very important for product designers. We have to make a conscious effort to implement all these core principles of the WCAG.
Leadership is also crucial. Just like the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is very strict when it comes to financial solutions in Nigeria, perhaps regulators could make it a guideline to obtain a professional licence as a designer in Nigeria.
How I work
Being a product designer means you get to work as a team with the backend engineers and product managers, which I always try to understand. Depending on my audience, I can come up with a focus group to determine what they actually want from a product.
While I’m able to sketch out my wireframe, I’ll still need to go back and discuss with the backend guys if all these functions and approaches are workable.
Then I go into my high-fidelity designs, which basically consist of putting pictures, colours, and a couple of other elements. I use Figma, Adobe Illustrator, and sometimes Adobe Photoshop.
The next step involves prototyping.
Then I deploy to the backend, and the backend engineers take over from there. If there are going to be any issues, we will work around them. Like, all the buttons must be according to what you design, which makes it important to keep tabs on the backend team.
Work is smoother with AI
Recently, I’ve been trying to utilise AI in my work. You can actually see how your product will turn out with AI, which is another form of testing.
I normally use Figma’s prototyping to test my solutions, but now the rate at which I can deploy a design is faster with AI. I can easily integrate it with your designs and ship it out. Although they might not be as scaled
Now, I use Google Gemini to design and develop plugins. So far, I’ve created and published two plugins on Figma with this method. How it works is, if I have an idea, I put it on Google Gemini, and since I have a bit of a background in coding, I get the code and ship it to Cursor.
Based on the code generated on Gemini, Cursor would give me real-time changes to my designs.
Another approach is to design on Figma and link with Cursor. It’s also another way to determine if your product is actually doable.
Apart from the default Figma prototyping, a good way to know if your design is functional is to use AI. It’ll help to quickly build the product as well.
One of the projects I’ve worked on is a personal expense tracker. I had put the idea on Gemini, moved it to Cursor with the codes, and adjusted it till I was able to get what I wanted. I’m still using it for my own personal use.
As designers, we actually need to leverage AI to know how and if our product will work or not. It’s easier now, as you don’t need to be a backend programmer or frontend programmer before you can actually build a product.